from Scott Burnside of ESPN,

The trial season-ticket drive by prospective owners of a new NHL franchise in Las Vegas is expected to top the 11,000 mark by the end of Monday, a source told ESPN.com.

While there remains widespread belief within the hockey community that the NHL will become the first major professional sports league to put down stakes in the gambling mecca, it is now believed that the earliest a team would begin play is the 2017-18 season.

Bill Foley, the main investor in the group, had initially expressed optimism that an expansion team could take the ice in the fall of 2016, about four months after the Las Vegas Arena is expected to open on the strip.

continued